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Tuesday, September 30, 2014

President Obama speaks at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta on Sept. 16. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

CAROL D. LEONNIG5:14 PM

A security contractor with a gun and three prior convictions for assault and battery was allowed on an elevator with President Obama during a Sept. 16 trip to Atlanta, violating Secret Service protocols, according to three people familiar with the incident.

President Obama was not told of the lapse in his security during his trip. Director Julia Pierson, according to two people familiar with the incident, took steps to have the matter reviewed internally and did not refer it to an investigative unit that reviews violations of protocol and standard.

The incident, which rattled Secret Service agents assigned to the president’s detail, occurred as Obama visited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to discuss the U.S. response to the Ebola crisis.

Alton Nolen, the Muslim convert who recently beheaded an innocent coworker at a Vaughan's Food factory, was charged with three felony counts this morning at a Cleveland County Courthouse in Norman, Oklahoma.

Nolen faces one count of first degree murder, one count of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, and a final count of assault with a deadly weapon.

At a press conference this morning, Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn said that the gruesome attack was race-related and not a religious act, but he did admit that Nolen was infatuated with beheadings, which was evident from his facebook page.

"Altercation earlier in the day had to do with race, (Nolen) was saying he didn't like white people," Mashburn stated during the conference.

Mashburn said Nolen was retaliating against his coworkers who allegedly "oppressed" him at work. Several of them, victim Traci Johnson included, had filed complaints against him.

According to Mashburn, the attack is not considered an act of terror, and it will have to be pursued by federal authorities.

Breitbart News spoke with Public Information Officer Jeremy Lewis, who was on site during the press conference, and confirmed that the FBI is still investigating the alleged criminal's background, but that he is only facing state charges at this time.

The White House says it wants to work with Syria’s moderate rebels. But warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition came awfully close to striking one of their HQs.

Last week, an airstrike from the American-led coalition nearly hit a command-and-control facility affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the moderate rebels the Obama administration says are America’s “boots on the ground,” according to two opposition leaders. They are asking the Obama administration to please coordinate with them in the future before America bombs its only allies in Syria.

Since U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria began on Sept. 22, there has been no coordination between the U.S. military and its alleged partners on the ground, according to FSA leaders, civilian opposition leaders, and intelligence sources who have been briefed on the U.S. and allied military operation. It’s this lack of communication that led to an airstrike that hit only 200 meters from an FSA facility in the suburbs of Idlib. One source briefed on the incident said multiple FSA fighters were killed in the attack.

“Unfortunately, there is zero coordination with the Free Syrian Army. Because there is no coordination, we are seeing civilian casualties. Because there is no coordination, they are hitting empty buildings for ISIS,” Hussam Al Marie, the spokesman for the FSA in northern Syria, told The Daily Beast. “We have been getting promises that the coordination will be coming, but we have been getting promises since the beginning of this revolution and nothing has happened yet.”

The incident, which was not been previously reported, doesn’t just highlight the gap between the U.S. and its newly-endorsed allies in the moderate opposition, however. It also shows how complicated it can be to make alliances in the multi-factioned Syrian civil war. The coalition airstrike was targeting a base used by al Nusrah, the local al Qaeda affiliate. And the camp was, essentially, next door to the FSA facility. The al Qaeda fighters and the U.S-endorsed rebels were neighbors—and, at times, partners in battle against ISIS and the Bashar al-Assad regime.

“Because there is no coordination, [the U.S.-led coalition] hit an al Nusrah base in the Idlib suburbs that is only 200 meters from the Free Syrian Army,” Al Marie said.

There were 11 civilian casualties after the first day of U.S.-led airstrikes inside Syria, according to the FSA, and at least one more when the coalition struck a Shariah Court near Idlib two days ago that was under the control of al Nusrah. The U.S. government has said it cannot confirm any civilian casualties but will investigate any accidents.

“There are always civilian casualties when they are hitting al Nusrah because al Nusrah is just living among the people,” said Al Marie. “They didn’t do any real harm to ISIS, the buildings of ISIS were empty. Meanwhile, the main battle on the ground against ISIS hasn’t been supported yet. That’s the important thing, the ground battle.”

In the fight against ISIS in northern Syria, the FSA often fights alongside other rebel groups with varying levels of Islamic flavor: the Islamic Front, the Tawheed Brigade, and even the al Qaeda-linked al Nusrah Front. FSA fighters are moving around the area all the time and sometimes have to pass through al Nusrah checkpoints to get where they are going. And yet, according to the Obama administration, these moderate rebels can be trusted—despite their alliances of convenience with al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria. (On Sunday, the leader of al Nusrah made his first public statement in eight months, telling moderate rebels that his group, and not the United States, was their true partner.)

“Unfortunately, there is zero coordination with the Free Syrian Army. Because there is no coordination, we are seeing civilian casualties. Because there is no coordination, they are hitting empty buildings for ISIS.”

ChRNC Chairman Reince Priebus: 'We're in a Battle for Freedom in This Country'

by Jonathan Strong

Sep 30, 2014 6:37 AM PT

IOWA CITY, Iowa—On the trail here with Joni Ernst, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus lit into President Obama, Harry Reid and Ernst's opponent, Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) while outlining what he says Americans are “starving for” in their political leaders.

“We're in a battle for freedom in this country,” Priebus said at a campaign stop in Ankeny. “That's where we're at. It's the same battle that founded our country. It's the same battle that James Madison reaffirmed in our Bill of Rights. And here we are today.”

Reid is “one of the most divisive, dishonest, hypocritical, nasty people that takes everything that you don't like about Washington and wraps it up into one little nice package with a bow on top,” Priebus said in one of several interviews in between campaign stops.

The Wisconsin native also discussed immigration, demanding Obama back off an “unconstitutional” planned executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens.

“Here's the problem: the president's promised to follow through with his illegal activity. So I think the bigger issue for us, too, besides pointing out the hypocrisy and the lies, is to also point out to people – which we should do more of – is that he's promising to follow through with an unconstitutional illegal act. So they're intending to do this anyway, at least that's what he's saying,” Priebus said.

He also explained a recent statement from an RNC spokeswoman that drew fire from the right.

When Obama announced he was delaying his executive amnesty, RNC spokeswoman Ruth Guerra issued a statement that “The President’s empty rhetoric and broken promises are a slap in the face to millions of Hispanics across the country.” Critics like radio host Laura Ingraham interpreted the remark to be an implicit criticism of Obama for not moving forward on executive amnesty.

The intent, Priebus said, was to highlight how Obama has cynically used the immigration issue as a wedge to exploit Hispanic voters.

“I think the point here is, is the slap in the face to America in that this president is constantly using people, using politics and lying to people about what he intends to do or doesn't intend to do in order to curry favor for the moment. When in reality, he may have never intended to follow through anyway. Or, if he did intend, he was simply trying to use whatever rhetoric he was using for temporary political gratification. That's the point. The slap in the face is he uses people as political pawns and he simply lies to them in order to curry favor with them,” Priebus said, although allowing the statement might have been more carefully worded.

Regarding the ongoing border crisis, Priebus said it had changed the landscape on the immigration issue.

“Barack Obama overplayed his hand so big time that what he's done is he's unified America around the idea that unless you secure the border, any other talk of immigration reform of any kind is sort of premature, because no one wants to end up in the same place 10 years from now, no matter what you're ideas are,” he said.

Fresh from a trip to Colorado, where Rep. Cory Gardner had recently taken a small lead in the newest polls, Priebus was optimistic about the political landscape headed into the final stretch of the campaign.

On the stump, he was a bit more fiery than the Iowa politicians who spoke alongside him and drew laughs when ridiculing Braley's comments about Sen. Chuck Grassley that were caught on a hidden camera.

At a fundraising cocktail reception with trial lawyers in Corpus Christi, Texas, Braley warned attendees that if Republicans took the Senate, “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, [would be] serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee” – referring to Grassley.

“I come from Wisconsin, I'm your neighbor. I gotta tell you, if somebody went around the country and jabbed at the Packers, Harley Davidson, Miller Lite, cheese – I don't care Republican or Democrat, that person doesn't belong in the conversation,” Priebus told audiences in Iowa.

He also offered a joke about his name as an aside, saying, “I have a little son named Jack, my daughter is Grace. Isn't it nice that one family tradition – Reince – is killed off with Jack and Grace? Some things are worth changing, my name's one of them” to laughter.

Priebus attributed Ernst's success in Iowa to her authenticity, life experience as a mother and soldier, and a clever ad in which she described an upbringing castrating hogs.

“I feel really good about Joni. If you look at the environment, she's even or a little ahead. Braley's not getting above 45 percent. Branstead's going to win by 18 or 20. The environment's excellent. Everything points to a victory here. It's a good play. It's a good bet,” Priebus said.

Since he frequently mentions authenticity, I asked Priebus about how he likes working inside the beltway, a place infamous for its cynicism, even if some of that is overblown from time to time.

“It's a fake environment. Things are fake. Spin, sometimes, can be fake. Spin within our party can be fake. Spin from the other side can be fake. Spin from the media can be fake. And it's all created to create more spin and other fake media!” Priebus said.

The worst is Reid, he added.

“I mean, this guy is unbelievable. He rips on anyone who makes over 50 grand a year. He lives in the Ritz Carlton in Washington, D.C. And he's spending millions and millions of dollars from billionaires on television trying to bury our candidates alive. It's the hypocritical nature of politics that drives people and me crazy. And he takes the cake.”

airman Reince Priebus: 'We're in a Battle for Freedom in This Country'

by Jonathan Strong

Sep 30, 2014 6:37 AM PT

IOWA CITY, Iowa—On the trail here with Joni Ernst, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus lit into President Obama, Harry Reid and Ernst's opponent, Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) while outlining what he says Americans are “starving for” in their political leaders.

“We're in a battle for freedom in this country,” Priebus said at a campaign stop in Ankeny. “That's where we're at. It's the same battle that founded our country. It's the same battle that James Madison reaffirmed in our Bill of Rights. And here we are today.”

Reid is “one of the most divisive, dishonest, hypocritical, nasty people that takes everything that you don't like about Washington and wraps it up into one little nice package with a bow on top,” Priebus said in one of several interviews in between campaign stops.

The Wisconsin native also discussed immigration, demanding Obama back off an “unconstitutional” planned executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens.

“Here's the problem: the president's promised to follow through with his illegal activity. So I think the bigger issue for us, too, besides pointing out the hypocrisy and the lies, is to also point out to people – which we should do more of – is that he's promising to follow through with an unconstitutional illegal act. So they're intending to do this anyway, at least that's what he's saying,” Priebus said.

He also explained a recent statement from an RNC spokeswoman that drew fire from the right.

When Obama announced he was delaying his executive amnesty, RNC spokeswoman Ruth Guerra issued a statement that “The President’s empty rhetoric and broken promises are a slap in the face to millions of Hispanics across the country.” Critics like radio host Laura Ingraham interpreted the remark to be an implicit criticism of Obama for not moving forward on executive amnesty.

The intent, Priebus said, was to highlight how Obama has cynically used the immigration issue as a wedge to exploit Hispanic voters.

“I think the point here is, is the slap in the face to America in that this president is constantly using people, using politics and lying to people about what he intends to do or doesn't intend to do in order to curry favor for the moment. When in reality, he may have never intended to follow through anyway. Or, if he did intend, he was simply trying to use whatever rhetoric he was using for temporary political gratification. That's the point. The slap in the face is he uses people as political pawns and he simply lies to them in order to curry favor with them,” Priebus said, although allowing the statement might have been more carefully worded.

Regarding the ongoing border crisis, Priebus said it had changed the landscape on the immigration issue.

“Barack Obama overplayed his hand so big time that what he's done is he's unified America around the idea that unless you secure the border, any other talk of immigration reform of any kind is sort of premature, because no one wants to end up in the same place 10 years from now, no matter what you're ideas are,” he said.

Fresh from a trip to Colorado, where Rep. Cory Gardner had recently taken a small lead in the newest polls, Priebus was optimistic about the political landscape headed into the final stretch of the campaign.

On the stump, he was a bit more fiery than the Iowa politicians who spoke alongside him and drew laughs when ridiculing Braley's comments about Sen. Chuck Grassley that were caught on a hidden camera.

At a fundraising cocktail reception with trial lawyers in Corpus Christi, Texas, Braley warned attendees that if Republicans took the Senate, “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, [would be] serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee” – referring to Grassley.

“I come from Wisconsin, I'm your neighbor. I gotta tell you, if somebody went around the country and jabbed at the Packers, Harley Davidson, Miller Lite, cheese – I don't care Republican or Democrat, that person doesn't belong in the conversation,” Priebus told audiences in Iowa.

He also offered a joke about his name as an aside, saying, “I have a little son named Jack, my daughter is Grace. Isn't it nice that one family tradition – Reince – is killed off with Jack and Grace? Some things are worth changing, my name's one of them” to laughter.

Priebus attributed Ernst's success in Iowa to her authenticity, life experience as a mother and soldier, and a clever ad in which she described an upbringing castrating hogs.

“I feel really good about Joni. If you look at the environment, she's even or a little ahead. Braley's not getting above 45 percent. Branstead's going to win by 18 or 20. The environment's excellent. Everything points to a victory here. It's a good play. It's a good bet,” Priebus said.

Since he frequently mentions authenticity, I asked Priebus about how he likes working inside the beltway, a place infamous for its cynicism, even if some of that is overblown from time to time.

“It's a fake environment. Things are fake. Spin, sometimes, can be fake. Spin within our party can be fake. Spin from the other side can be fake. Spin from the media can be fake. And it's all created to create more spin and other fake media!” Priebus said.

The worst is Reid, he added.

“I mean, this guy is unbelievable. He rips on anyone who makes over 50 grand a year. He lives in the Ritz Carlton in Washington, D.C. And he's spending millions and millions of dollars from billionaires on television trying to bury our candidates alive. It's the hypocritical nature of politics that drives people and me crazy. And he takes the cake.”

It’s simply not plausible to believe the White House press secretary is unwittingly mistaken on this matter. By now he has to know what the truth is. He has to know full well that Mr. Obama had ISIS in mind when he referred to it as a “jayvee team.” So, by the way, does Mr. Obama, who is also deceiving Americans about this matter.

I understand why the president and his press secretary would rather not admit to having mocked ISIS now that it is the largest, richest, most well armed, and most formidable terrorist group on the planet. But Mr. Obama did, and being duplicitous about the fact that he did isn’t going to help anyone. It will, in fact, further erode the president’s credibility.

It is bad enough for this administration to be so inept; it’s worse for them to be so obviously dishonest as well.

You know, the one where the president declared the war in Iraq over, only to have to eat his words as he sent the U.S. military to fight terrorists in Iraq who were taking over vast swaths of the country?

No, I’m not talking about President George W. Bush’s May 1, 2003, speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. I’m talking about President Obama’s speech at the White House on Oct. 21, 2011, in which he boasted about his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops and bring “the long war in Iraq” to an end. It’s still on the White House Web site under the (now ironic) headline “Remarks by the President on Ending the War in Iraq.”

“As a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end,” Obama solemnly declared, “[And] today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”

“The last American soldier[s] will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops,” the president continued, adding “That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end.”

He said this Iraq withdrawal was only the beginning. “The end of war in Iraq reflects a larger transition,” Obama intoned. “The tide of war is receding. Now, even as we remove our last troops from Iraq, we’re beginning to bring our troops home from Afghanistan. The long war in Iraq will come to an end by the end of this year. The transition in Afghanistan is moving forward, and our troops are finally coming home.”

So much for receding tides. As a direct result of the withdrawal he announced that day — a decision he made over the objections of his military commanders on the ground — the terrorists the United States had defeated during the 2007 surge were able to recover, regroup and impose their brutal rule of over a swath of territory in Iraq and Syria the size of Britain.

Now we are back at war in Iraq. Not a new Iraq war, mind you — the same war Obama claimed to have ended in that 2011 speech. A senior administration official admitted that the White House is relying on the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq as statutory authority for the current campaign against the Islamic State. So as a matter of law, the war Obama is now prosecuting in Iraq is a continuation of the war that began there in 2003.

There is one big difference between the Bush and Obama “mission accomplished” speeches, however: Bush quickly realized his was a mistake, while Obama kept giving his over and over again. Obama’s declaration that the “tide of war is receding” (often coupled with a promise to “focus on nation building here at home”) became a staple of his speeches. As recently as a few months ago, on May 27, 2014, Obama gave an address in the Rose Garden in which he announced his plan to fulfill the promise of his “mission accomplished” speech and withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by 2016.

“It’s time to turn the page on more than a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Obama declared, adding “Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them. Yet this is how wars end in the 21st century.”

As he spoke those words, the forces of the Islamic State were attacking Fallujah and within days had captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city — unleashing a wave of massacres, crucifixions and beheadings.

On “60 Minutes” Sunday, Obama said the intelligence community “underestimated”the threat posed by the Islamic State. The truth is it was Obama who underestimated the threat — not because of bad intelligence, but because he was blinded by his own ideological insistence on withdrawal. He did not want to hear that a mortal danger was gathering in Iraq, because it conflicted with his plan to cement his legacy as the president who brought every U.S. soldier home from Iraq and Afghanistan before he left office.

Now, instead of withdrawing, Obama is deploying our military to carry out strikes against the terrorists in Iraq and Syria. And his rhetoric of retreat has been replaced with the language of resolve. “There can be no reasoning — no negotiation — with this brand of evil,” Obama told the U.N. General Assembly last week. “The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.”

Exclusive: No Record of Intel Briefings for Obama Week Before Embassy Attacks

by Wynton Hall

Sep 12, 2012 8:47 AM PT

According to the White House calendar, there is no public record of President Barack Obama attending his daily intelligence briefing--known as the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB)--in the week leading up to the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the murder of U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American members of his staff:

The last time prior to the slayings that the White House calendar publicly confirms Mr. Obama attending his daily intelligence briefing was September 5th. (The White House did not provide an official public calendar for September 8-10.) Mr. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at 5:00 p.m. yesterday.

According to a recent study by the Government Accountability Institute, Mr. Obama has only attended 43.8 percent of his Presidential Daily Briefs in the first 1,225 days of his Administration.

The White House responded by claiming that President Obama reads daily intelligence reports, even if he does not attend the briefings personally.